Exclusive interview: Ex-first lady Laura Bush to speak at luncheon

President George W. Bush, right, and wife Laura Bush accept Cuban freedom activist Dr. Oscar Elias Biscet Gonzalez' Presidential Medal of Freedom, presented by Dr. Angel Gurrido, vice president of the Lawton Foundation for Human Rights, center, in Dallas. The medal and other artifacts were donated on Biscet's behalf to The George W. Bush Institute as part of its newly launched Freedom Collection. Laura Bush will speak Thursday in Amarillo at the Power of the Purse luncheon.

Almost five years to the day since she was first approached with the idea, former first lady Laura Bush will return to Amarillo to raise funds for the institute that bears her name.

Bush will headline Thursday’s Power of the Purse luncheon in the Amarillo Civic Center Heritage Ballroom, 401 S. Buchanan St.

The luncheon, which will feature the auctioning of handbags donated by local and international celebrities, raises funds for the Laura W. Bush Institute of Women’s Health at Texas Tech University Health Sciences Center. Limited tickets are available.

“I have been very grateful to actually have people tell me that because they heard me (speak), they changed their lifestyles or knew that they were having a heart attack,” Bush said in an exclusive interview with the Amarillo Globe-News. “That made me really happy to work on the Laura Bush Institute.”

The institute focuses on research, education and outreach for women’s health and gender differences in medicine, said Dr. Marjorie R. Jenkins, director of the institute’s Amarillo campus.

“One of the things they’ve started working on is to prepare doctors ... who don’t realize when they’re in medical school or even when they’re working as a doctor, the big differences between men and women,” Bush said.

“For instance, the stent that might be used to treat heart conditions are larger than a lot of women’s veins are.”

Researchers only started collecting data on gender differences about 25 years ago, Jenkins said.

“Before that, (doctors) just assumed that women were the same as men; they just had a few different parts. Now, we have 25 years of work to show that there are significant differences.”

In addition to equipment, drug therapies must take gender and sex differences into account.

“Women, in most cases, are slighter, smaller than men. The dosage that might be appropriate for men might not be appropriate for women,” Bush said.

“We’re working on getting the message out to doctors ... of what these gender differences are, so it becomes a common part of the doctors’ preparation,” she said.

Jenkins said the institute concentrates on medical research, including providing seed money for studies in areas such as Alzheimer’s and osteoporosis; education, including continuing education classes for medical professionals; and outreach, including its Girl Power program, discussing health and wellness issues with preteen girls.

Bush was first asked about attaching her name to the institute in 2007, while her husband, former President George W. Bush, was still in office.

The Amarillo-based institute works across five Texas Tech Health Sciences Center campuses to conduct medical research devoted to women’s health issues.

“I’m proud of the institute, proud of the research being funded from there, the service that it gives to women all over West Texas, that people that I know from my part of the country are benefiting,” Bush said.

Both Bush and Jenkins expressed surprise that women’s health issues have cropped up so frequently in the 2012 political environment, from the controversy over Susan G. Komen Foundation’s support of Planned Parenthood to laws in states like Virginia and Texas requiring ultrasounds before abortions.

Republican presidential candidate Rick Santorum has talked about using the White House as a bully pulpit to speak against contraception, and a Georgetown University Law Center student was excoriated for testifying before Democrats in the U.S. House of Representatives in support of mandating insurance coverage for contraceptives.

But neither Bush nor Jenkins commented specifically on the politics of such moves.

“George and I, as you know, are not involved in politics anymore,” Bush said. “We’re involved in policy.”

“Of course,” Jenkins said, “the Laura W. Bush Institute doesn’t delve into those type of things as public policy. ... But in relation to what we do at the institute, I think part of what, as a sex and gender physician, my whole thought process around this for 10 years is we need to have a healthy respect for sex and gender differences.

“They’re two variables that we all have, basic building blocks of who we are ... how we interact with our environment, how we interact with health, both what men go through and what women go through,” she said.

“If everybody would just integrate that respect and awareness of sex and gender as an important variable to most of our lives, I think we might not be having such detailed and heated conversations,” Jenkins said.

“Some people see this as a social-type issue, or about making things equal. That’s not what it is. It’s really about science.

“Once we overcome that and people say this is about the evidence, there’s going to be better care for men and women and boys and girls of all ages.”